esfawkes

[esfawkes]

A brilliant soul was lost on July 24, 2024, with the passing of Jackson Taylor ___, 31. Known to most of the world as Jack, he was Taylor to his family.

Taylor was born on April 5, 1993, in ___, AL, to Tracy and Wendy Neely as the middle of 3 children. He was preceded in death by his grandfather, Gary Lynn ___: a larger-than-life man whose memory and legacy Taylor cherished and carried with him. He is survived by the love of his life, April; his father, Tracy, and his mother, Wendy; his older brother, Nathan, and his wife, Whitney; his younger sister, Bailey; his grandmother, Wanda ___; his aunt, Monnie ___; his grandfather, James Taylor ___, and his wife, Wanda; his uncle, Chris ___; his 2 beloved dogs, Izzy and Lula, and his cat, Charlie—as well as countless other family and friends whose lives he touched.

Despite its brevity, Jack’s life overflowed with accomplishments creative, professional, and personal. He was a community leader dedicated to building others up using his own experiences in overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges. He was gifted with great natural talent, though it was his tenacity, dedication, and determination which truly defined him. Committed to self-improvement, he embodied the spirit of getting back up after being knocked down.

Creating music was one of Taylor’s greatest joys in life; he was a marimbist, a pianist, a flautist, and a guitarist over the years, and the lyrics he wrote were raw, haunting, and cerebral. Music gave him the opportunity to experience the world beyond his hometown as part of the Music City Drum Corps in 2011. Passionate and intense, Taylor cared deeply for his family and friends. With warmth, empathy, and abundant generosity, he strove to better the lives of those around him and sought to be someone to whom others could turn for support. He wore his heart on his sleeve and was a vibrant, vivid figure with a blindingly bright future ahead of him that he forged with burning resolve and unyielding defiance.

From a young age, he was an autodidact, teaching himself whatever caught his interest to satisfy his own searing curiosity. This extraordinary self-motivation and self-discipline gave him the ability to not only recover but continuously triumph after being laid low. At the start of 2022, he was living in an RV as he took online courses in Cloud Computing at Western Governors University. By January the next year, he and his partner April had bought a beautiful house together that they spent the next year turning into a truly wonderful home.

At the time of his passing, Jack was a Cloud Services Engineer. He held many positions over the course of his career in IT, including working as a Cloud Support Technician, a Cloud Migration Lead, and a Lead Cloud Engineer. He never stopped pushing himself, and given time to realize his limitless potential, his full list of achievements would have been overwhelmingly long.

Jack will be remembered for his sense of humor, which alternated between wry and goofy, and his hugs, which were always perfect and exactly what you needed. He will be remembered for his laugh, his smile, and his refusal to be anyone or anything less than his whole self. He will be remembered for his creativity, stubbornness, and perseverance. And he will be remembered for who he was in the moments that mattered.

Above all, Taylor was unequivocally, unconditionally, and unwaveringly loved by his family, who remain immensely proud of his character, his intelligence, and his creativity, as well as his numerous achievements. Colorful and singular, there has never been and never will be another like him. One of a kind, the world is duller for his absence.

No services will be held, and in lieu of flowers, the family asks that you consider sending a donation to the National Alliance on Mental Illness at https://www.nami.org/.

If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out for help. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 for free simply by calling or texting 988. Your call is confidential, and you are not alone.

This obituary was written by his loving sister, who wishes more than anything that he was here to read it.

[esfawkes]

Leaks

It’s been brought to my attention that a lot of games — both ChoiceScript and Twine — are having their private demo/alpha/beta links and passwords leaked.

If you have a game with a private version, I strongly encourage you to change your password(s).

[esfawkes]

do you genuinely feel like you'll be able to see this project to its end ? it's been forever since an update's been put out, and i feel like with so much variations, love interests and just in general goals you've given yourself with this - it's probably too daunting for you

Can you please not?

Why would you send me this when I just said I was dealing with some health issues, both physical and mental? Is your goal to kick me while I’m down? I really don’t need this right now.

Maybe you’re right, maybe I’ve just been wasting everyone’s time, but I don’t understand what you hope to gain by sending this? Do you just want to make me feel bad? I genuinely don’t understand.

I’m sorry I’ve been so disappointing. I am. This isn’t how things were supposed to go. I’m sorry.

[esfawkes]

are u doing ok?

I’m having some lung issues right now and am struggling with my meds. Haven’t been doing too hot mentally either, but it’s a storm that will pass!

I’m sorry I haven’t been around more

[esfawkes]

How's your dog doing?

So not that long ago, we took Sadie to an oncologist, which was hours away in a whole other state. They ran a bunch of tests, which included taking biopsies of her liver, spleen, and lymph nodes, among other things.

They gave her some steroids and told us to give her Benadryl to try and shrink the tumor, then bring her back in a couple weeks or so.

The tumor — which was right beside her nose, making one side of her nose very misshapen :( — decreased in size immensely and seemed to no longer be tender to the touch. We thought that they may not need to do surgery after all to remove it, or if they did, it wouldn’t leave her very disfigured.

We took her back this week, and they were shocked at the state of the tumor. They ran some tests to make absolutely sure, then told us: The cancer is gone. They said they’ve never seen it go away like this.

We have to take regular pictures of her nose and bring her in immediately if anything starts to change, but otherwise… She doesn’t have cancer anymore!

So yeah, my dog is doing very, very well!! :)

[esfawkes]

We’re taking our dog Sadie to an oncologist Monday. This is her very first appointment, and none of us have ever met with a veterinary oncologist before.

Are there any questions we should have prepared? I don’t expect much to happen during this appointment beyond deciding on a plan to tackle her cancer and scheduling scans and the like, but I really don’t know.

[esfawkes]

I am probably going to be scarce on here for a while.

We have received some bad news regarding two family pets, while there are also ongoing issues with two others. It’s a lot to handle, so my focus will be on that for a bit.

Thank you for your understanding.

[esfawkes]

About the forum, there's a category for non-choicescript games called "other interactive fiction", would it be possible to get your thread moved there rather than forgoing the forums at all (since you seemed to value it)?

That’s what I hope I’ll be able to do, since I really don’t want to have to abandon the thread entirely; it has over 4k posts and has been a huge help to me. I just worry about how some on the forum might react to the switch? Likely that’s just excessive anxiety on my part, but it still has me nervous.

[esfawkes]

Apologies if this has been answered before. When and why did you make the decision to not release through COG/HG?

I haven’t answered this before, because I hadn’t mentioned it outside my Patreon until that post, lol.

There were a few reasons, but the primary factor was COG’s policy regarding Patreon. When I first started my Patreon in… 2018, I think? I had talked to Jason personally via PM about the limits of what I could offer on there, given ChoiceScript’s license. At some point the policy for authors’ Patreons changed, and I confirmed it with Jason over PM.

The policy change was regarding early access content for authors who featured that as reward on their Patreon. It had originally stated that any content in the Patreon-only version(s) of the game had to be made publicly available — in a beta version or what-have-you — after two weeks:

Any ChoiceScript-based content that you give to your patrons must be released to the general public within two weeks of giving your patrons access.

While talking about this with Jason, I suggested they change that to a month, since Patreon operates on a monthly cycle, and fortunately they did, which I think was a very good decision for many authors with Patreons.

Unfortunately, it didn’t make any difference for my own situation, so I eventually decided to move Seven Heirs to Twine. Again, there were some other reasons for this decision, but I consider this to be the real catalyst.

It was not a decision I made lightly, as Seven Heirs was fairly successful on the forum, and I received a lot of helpful and high-level feedback on there that I (personally) don’t believe Tumblr is as conducive to. I think a forum like Discourse creates a better environment to have a proper dialogue with readers on what works and doesn’t work in a game. It allows for an actual back and forth. And, in my own experience, the lack of anonymity on a forum sometimes fostered a bit more… “professionalism,” for lack of a better word, in the interactions between author and reader. Not always, of course, but still, lol.

I had my share of really, really bad experiences on the forum, but it is still the thing I most regret having to leave behind in switching from ChoiceScript to Twine.

Once I have things a bit more settled on my end, I do have plans to address that, the current lack of a proper community for Seven Heirs’ readers, but for the moment the actual game itself is my priority.

I hope this answered your question!

[esfawkes]

I received a lot of replies on my last post, as well as asks and messages, and I want to thank everyone who took the time to be so wonderfully kind and supportive. I read every single word, and I am so incredibly grateful.

Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart. <3

[esfawkes]

You'll never finish the game, will you? you will make us wait for other years with the hope that we will forget it. Wouldn't you be more honest to say” I no longer have a passion for the game and am not going to finish it? “ you're like a yandere dev, the only difference is that he at least deigns to make updates.

I am deeply annoyed that you’ve made me feel the need to post this before I was ready, but since it has been quite a while since I’ve shared any real progress updates or sneak peeks here, I can see where you’re coming from, rude as your delivery was.

So here, a little walkthrough of the current developmental build of Seven Heirs:

Some of the content is still just placeholders, especially on the About You screen, but it shows you the main UI; the About You, Compendium, and Achievements screens; general notifications; achievement notifications; the name generator; the character creator and randomizer; the randomize option; and the back button (which goes back 10 “pages”).

This month I’m focusing on writing and finishing up some more of the desktop UI and behind-the-scenes coding before moving on to the mobile UI.

I’ve been taking a brief break the past couple of weeks since there have been a deluge of health crises with my dogs, but generally speaking, I spend every single weekday working on 7H. Some days are better than others, and I often struggle to remain on a single task, meaning I bounce around a lot from thing to thing, but progress is being made. Not that I need to prove anything to you, but here we are.

Anyway, yeah, Seven Heirs has been moved to Twine. SugarCube 2.36.1, Tweego, a bunch of custom macros created by myself and others, all that.

I encourage you to work on your entitlement and need to make assumptions, my friend. I think you’ll find more happiness that way.

[esfawkes]

The Golden Rose: Book One is OUT NOW!!!

“As the artist mourns his fortune

So the Dynasty falls to crumble,

And the two branches snatch asunder”

You are a recent member of The White Company, a mercenary guild on the far side of the law. Your job consists of hunting artifacts and roaming ruins that the Church has forbidden to mention. One of your expeditions, however, leads you down a path that is much deeper than you ever anticipated.

“The Golden Rose: Book One” is a thrilling 1.2-million-word interactive fantasy novel by Ana Ventura, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Juggle friendships, new alliances, and flames of romance in this epic adventure that will take you to an Europe where History took a different turn.

Play as male or female; straight, gay, or bisexual.

Find romance, friendship, or rivalry with a cast of colorful characters.

Hunt down the thief that stole your forbidden maps!

Fight against bandits and city guards while trying to stray away from the all-seeing Eyes of the Church.

Explore ancient ruins and the cobble-stoned streets of the medieval city of Tarragona. Step into a grand cathedral, a sprawling market, a multicolored harbor, the dark gates of the city, or an aqueduct that no one dares to come close to.

Bond with a stubborn old horse.

Choose to ally with a street urchin or the feral captain of the Guard.

Uncover what is true in a world where denial reigns supreme.

Start to unravel your own mysterious past.

Immerse yourself in a world rich with characters, story, and lore.

Do you believe in Destiny?

- - - 

The Golden Rose: Book One is out for you to play!

You can find it at the links below:

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1892950/The_Golden_Rose_Book_One/

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.hostedgames.goldenrose1&hl=pt_PT&gl=US

App Store Omnibus: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hosted-games/id1302297731

Choice of Games: https://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/golden-rose-book-one/

- - - 

I hope you enjoy it! 🌹

[esfawkes]

Hi Fawkes, I was wondering what are the personality attributes in your WIP?

There are two sets of personality stats in Seven Heirs: Personality Stats and Mini-Personality Stats.

Personality Stats are the main personality traits of the MC, and at the moment there are 15 of them: Charismatic, Clever, Compassionate, Confident, Cruel, Expedient, Hotheaded, Obedient, Outspoken, Rebellious, Reserved, Supercilious, Timid, Vain, and Willful. There’s a whole mechanic of “confirmed traits” that exists, but it’s a bit complicated, so I’m not going to get into it right now. :)

Mini-Personality Stats are significantly simpler, which is by design. There are only 4 of them: Abrasive, Charming, Polite, and Witty. These exist to give the MC more, well, personality in the early parts of the game while their actually personality is still being developed. Whichever of the mini-personality stats has the highest value is the “active” mini-personality for the MC; if there’s a tie between two or more stats, the one most recently increased is the “active” one.

As the game progresses, the mini-personalities will be used less and less often in favor of the other personality traits, until they’re completely unused.

[esfawkes]

How do I see the library? I can't access the link

Here’s the current link to the Library!

[esfawkes]

I really hope ur not gonna discontinue this IF!! I LOVE IT SO MUCH SO PLS DONT GIVE UP ILL WAIT FOR FOREVER!! I HOPE U FEEL BETTER❤️❤️❤️

I’m so happy to know that you like it! And no need to worry, I have no plans to discontinue Seven Heirs. I spend time every weekday working on it. :)

[esfawkes]

are terrisen and Baelira the result of a affair?

They are not! While Eraven and Alapharen have brown hair, they each also carry the recessive gene for blonde hair. Hope this clears that up!

[esfawkes]

which RO do you think would be best politically? I'm thinking Vesperion? High-ranking, powerful, respectable family, and marrying their heir would at at least delay anything they would want to do to me and make me seem better when it comes to the dead queen mess. After its Nethica, since well his family.

I think Paladin, ambassador (My memory is shit so sorry) might be worse. Since one doesn't have any power and the other is a representative of a foreign power.

The best politically… Probably Nethica?

Jasiphae and Vesperion would be very close seconds, but they both come with baggage (Jasiphae with her previous engagement to Terrisen, Vesperion with his family’s disapproval). Nethica, on the other hand, doesn’t have baggage like that and comes from one of the wealthiest families on the continent. That said, however… Nethica is a second son, whereas Vesperion is the heir to House Verathae…

As for the worst match politically: Elor, easily. Sebriel would be second, yet still considerably better. Iphorah and Senetha would be tied for third, given that they’re both forbidden to marry.